#PreMarket Primer: Wednesday, July 9: Chinese CPI Cools In June

The figure gave the People's Bank of China more room to ease
further if necessary and confirmed that the region's domestic
demand has been muted.

The nation's economic data has been slowly improving over the
past months as Beijing's mini-stimulus efforts take effect. Many
believe the bank will consider further easing in the future if the
region's data continues to show lackluster improvement.

On Tuesday,
Reuters
reported that Citigroup (NYSE:
C
) may pay nearly $7 billion to settle a case with the US Department
of Justice over whether or not the bank defrauded investors who
purchased mortgage-securities during the period before the
financial crisis. The settlement, expected to be paid mostly in
cash, could be agreed to as early as next week. AbbVie (NYSE:
ABBV
) increased its offer to acquire Shire PLC to over $51 billion on
Tuesday, marking AbbVie's fourth attempt to make a deal with Shire.
AbbVie is one of many US companies currently making a play for
their European counterparts in order to reincorporate and benefit
from a lower corporate tax rate. Shire has said its board will
consider the offer and make an announcement when a decision is
made. The dispute between Amazon.com (NASDAQ:
AMZN
) and Hachette Book Group continued this week after Amazon offered
to let authors keep all of the revenue from their e-book sales, an
offer that Hachette quickly rebuffed. Amazon and Hachette have been
involved in a public battle over e-book prices leaving Hachette
authors caught in the middle. On Wednesday, Libya's Sharara
oilfield reopened after months of being shut down due to protests.
Libya's National Oil Co. confirmed that the 340,000 barrels per day
complex had resumed production, but that exports may not ramp up
for another week as the nation's Zawiya refinery will receive the
first oil flows.

Asian markets were down across the board; the NIKKEI was down
0.08 percent, the Shanghai composite lost 1.23 percent, the KOSPI
was down 0.31 percent, the Shenzhen composite fell 1.64 percent and
the Hang Seng index lost 1.55 percent.

European Markets

European markets were mostly lower with the exception of the MIB
and the IBEX, which gained 0.24 percent and 0.22 percent
respectively. The FTSE rose 0.63 percent, the STOXX 600 was up 0.37
percent, the DAX gained 0.14 percent and the CAC 40 was up 0.24
percent.

Energy futures were lower; Brent futures lost 0.28 percent and
WTI futures were down 0.04 percent. Gold and silver were up 0.52
percent and 0.60 percent respectively and industrial metals were
higher with the exception of tin, which lost 0.77 percent. Copper
was up 0.29 percent, aluminum gained 0.83 percent and zinc rose
0.84 percent.

The euro was steady above $1.36 and gained 0.20 percent against
the pound. The dollar gained 0.05 percent against the yen, but lost
0.14 percent against the pound and 0.06 percent against the
Australian dollar.

MSC Industrial Direct Company (NYSE:
MSM
) is expected to report third quarter EPS of $1.06 on revenue of
$727.35 million, compared to last year's EPS of $1.05 on revenue of
$636.92 million. WD-40 Company (NASDAQ:
WDFC
) is expected to report third quarter EPS of $0.72 on revenue of
$99.16 million, compared to last year's EPS of $0.66 on revenue of
$93.10 million.

Please note that once you make your selection, it will apply to all future visits to NASDAQ.com.
If, at any time, you are interested in reverting to our default settings, please select Default Setting above.

If you have any questions or encounter any issues in changing your default settings, please email isfeedback@nasdaq.com.

Please confirm your selection:

You have selected to change your default setting for the Quote Search. This will now be your default target page;
unless you change your configuration again, or you delete your
cookies. Are you sure you want to change your settings?